One of the simplest ways to boost your writing game and get some zen into your life is to create a daily journaling practice. Simply taking time, even as few as five minutes, to write down—by hand— your daily thoughts, experiences, or gratitude can boost your writing skills and even your mood!
Writing offers many benefits to those who practice the art form, and it also helps us bear witness: a term that means to carry the experience of something one has seen or experienced into the future. To bear witness means to say, “I saw this. I feel this. I remember.”
To begin a journaling practice, first, choose your medium. This can be a really fun part of being a writer or maintaining a journaling practice. Where will you keep your journal? You can use a computer, tablet, or phone to journal, but the best thing to do is to use a paper medium. You can use a tiny notebook that fits in your pocket, a big flashy journal embossed with your name, or just a stack of scrap paper you stapled together. The choice is yours!
Once you’ve chosen your journal, it’s time to get down to business. We are living in a very unique time: your daily life might not look like it used to, and you may be having experiences that are totally new to you. Your future self—and, who knows, maybe even future generations!—will be very grateful to have a record of the time in which you lived. Memory can alter our experiences, but having a written record of what you felt and saw in the moment at any point in your life gives you an anchor point as you reflect on your past to move forward into the future.
Sometimes it’s easier to get started in a journal when you’re experiencing a strong emotion. Try this: Freewrite for five minutes (set a timer on your phone, your microwave, or stove!) about something in the world today that makes you really angry. Choose a large issue that concerns you. Get really angry. Rant. Write in capital letters, if you’d like.
Then, after five minutes, shift gears. Take a deep breath. Set aside what you’ve just written and find out where and how this issue intersects your own life. This is crucial. Make it personal, full of images. Engage your five senses: sight, touch, smell, taste, and sound. You might think about how the story of your family overlaps with the larger stories of these issues. As James Merrill wrote, “we understand history through the family around the table.” Keep going, if you wish, or end off for the day after five minutes.
You can do this same exercise every day, or you can write absolutely whatever you want. Here are a few more ideas to keep you going:
- Write three things every day that you are grateful for, no matter how simple
- Describe your day in great detail
- Write down your greatest frustration of the day and your greatest triumph of the day
If this exercise resonated with you, research the following poems and books online or at your local library or bookstore for more inspiration. These writers do a great job of capturing a central problem or issue of their time in vivid detail:
Bruce Weigl, “Song of Napalm”
Yusuf Komunyakaa, “Facing It”
Tarfia Faizullah, “100 Bells”
Warsan Shire, “Home”
Fatimah Asghar, “If They Should Come for Us”
Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English (2014 book)
Remember that any #WritingWednesday post can go in your journal, and feel free to post your results in the comments or on social media with the hashtags #WritingWednesdays, #BlueLakeFineArtsCamp, and #VirtualArts
Thanks for reading this VirtualArts post, brought to you by Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp!